was Margo Bayne’s mother. They lived in a big log house on Lone Oak Road. She kept the pine poles waxed and polished, from floor to roof. There was a little triangular landing where you could look down on everyone. Margo’s Dad was an eye doctor and he’d be reading in the living room. Her brothers were never there, playing in the log fort they built in the woods near the main house. They were older than Margo and I felt sorry for her. She didn’t have any sisters. I had lots.

Kathy was the oldest, with blond hair, mine is brown, and she always had two chopped egg sandwiches for lunch plus carrot sticks. The carrot sticks were very important. People said they’d give her good eyes.

I ate supper at Margo’s sometimes because we were the same age. There were a lot of dishes and then dessert, some pudding with a fancy sauce you dipped from a little bowl with rosebuds. Mrs. Bayne was our Camp Fire Leader, and we’d troop over there, Kathy, me and the Crosby girls, to make booties for needy babies, and she’d correct the stitches. I had a pair she said we couldn’t send, they weren’t good enough. She said you had to think whether your own baby could wear them. I was ten and thought my baby would like them just fine. They took a lot of work, white with blue flowers.

What happened was, I was in the kitchen at our house and Mom was making a cake. I was licking chocolate beaters, and she told me since I was the one Margo’s age, I might be hearing some rumors. She wanted me to know straight out. They couldn’t find Margo’s Mom the night before, all the dishes laid out same as usual. I figure Margo must have gone up to that little landing. You could see everything up there. We played dolls there, or jacks, or talked about the girls who wore bras. We didn’t, not yet. Margo’s Dad couldn’t find her either. I got scared then. Margo’s Dad was an eye doctor and he could see anything. She said Margo’s Mom went down to some fort the kids built.

I was going to stop my Mom right then, tell her I knew all about the fort Margo’s brothers built. We weren’t allowed down there, no girls. But Mom had her eye on the batter real hard. She said Mrs. Bayne went down to that fort the kids built and shot herself before they all came home. Mom put the cake in the oven. I didn’t want the beaters anymore and kept asking her why, you mean they couldn’t take her to the hospital? Margo’s Dad is an eye doctor and he should know what to do. The fort, the fort. I never saw any gun. What gun? We weren’t allowed in there. They couldn’t find her. Margo’s Mom is dead. Now Margo’s the only girl.

The next day at school I told Janet about Margo’s Mom and the fort Margo’s brothers built. I always told Janet everything. She said no, her Dad said it was a heart attack. That night we got out the paper to see for ourselves, and sure enough, it said Mrs. Bayne died suddenly of a heart attack at her home. It listed a bunch of stuff but didn’t say Margo’s Mom was our Camp Fire leader. I guess that’s what my Mom meant, that I’d hear a lot of rumors. I wished the paper had at least told about the fort, even if they left out that part about the gun. I mean, that’s where she went, it was not in her house with dinner ready.

This poem first appeared in So To Speak.

Parts of Speech

in memory of Caroline Shrodes

Only two mornings since you gave into the ground, and I am hunting the greennursery for signs, refusing any nounbut life. Full sun, the markersadvise, small instructionstacked to their run-on sentenceof grief, like notesin the margins of manuscripts, your brightletters tugging the bloom.

Later I will walk the adjacentyears of our lives, subjunctive rooms of talk, interjectionsof fruit cups, participlesleft to their own devices.But here among perennial ivy,baskets of periwinkleand bougainvillea flash fuschialike a verb in present tense.

Can you hear the lines ringing,infinitives of friends,the day’s conversations splashedwith Caroline?

I stake out the eveningfor poems: clusters of kalanchoe,lipstick pink, and the deeperhearts of begonias, the open grammarof leaves. Kneeling to trowel, I slip the soaked roots outeasy as parentheses.

The night breathes on. All soundis edited now but that softcat-pad down the corridorof seminars, your true-redshoes, their rhinestone buttonsblinking like a perfect paragraph,your gypsy smile like a prepositionin the sky: of, with, beside, beyond.

This poem first appeared in The Network.

Loss At Evening

It did not happenas I thought, long used to prophecy,knowing when the first leaffalls, the lastwill give up clingingto a tired limb.I have watched tulipspeek above ground, intenton survival, the delicate promiseof crimson, velvet crowns.Oblivious to the windat our back, a jet altersexistence, its white message,a billion dandelion seeds.

There is no needfor alarm. I have heardCanadian geese in the fieldbehind the house, warning:all things move, all thingscall and are called.The leaves, pins droppingin the hush of wings.

This poem first appeared in The Thing Itself.

Carol Barrett holds doctorates in both creative writing and clinical psychology. She has worked for many years with widowed persons. Carol teaches for Union Institute & University and Saybrook University, where she offers a course on “Poetry and Holistic Health.” She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship in Poetry, and the Richard Snyder Award from Ashland Poetry Press for her book Calling in the Bones (2005.) Her research appears in journals in the fields of Thanatology, Gerontology, Psychology and Women’s Studies. Her poems appear in literary magazines and anthologies as well as periodicals in Medicine and Religious Studies. She lives in Bend, OR.